My psychological horror story You Are Reading This Story has been published in Creatures of Habit: The Little Things We Do by Culture Cult Press. It’s a self-referential piece of metafiction about a writer trapped by his own words.
This story begins at the end.
My psychological horror story Me, a Hero has been accepted into the Mask of Sanity anthology by Wicked Shadow Press. It’s a story about a man who joins the search for a missing girl in hopes of making an appearance on the local evening news.
Since the girl disappeared, some of her friends had turned her regular table in the corner of the coffee shop into a makeshift shrine, with a large 8×10 photo, plus a few flowers, candles, and even a teddy bear. A hand-made sign reading “Have you seen me?” was affixed to the wall above the table.
“Yes,” I thought as I paid for my coffee this morning. “Plenty of times.“
My weird horror story Uncle Pumpkin’s Tongue has been accepted by 7th-Circle Pyrite. It’s the story of a Halloween carnival ride with a sinister secret.
It wasn’t the slide itself that scared me—it was the character of Uncle Pumpkin that I found most terrifying. He was supposed to be a silly, clown-like figure that brought joy to children around Halloween, but the only thing he brought to me was a sense of profound unease, a lingering dread that left me feeling like I had a sandbag in my stomach.
My psychological horror story You Are Reading This Story has been accepted into the Creatures of Habit anthology by Culture Cult Press. It’s a self-referential piece of metafiction about a writer trapped by his own words.
This story begins at the end.
My urban fantasy story Dragonsbreath has been published in the Streets of Fire and Shadow anthology by Treeshaker Books. It’s the story of a teen forced to wear a fireproof mask to protect himself and others from a power he can’t control.
Content warning: mild goreThe woman’s head lurched forward as her SUV slowed to a jarring stop, its bumper only inches from the police car parked sideways across her lane. Half a dozen emergency vehicles crowded the street ahead of her. There were police cars. Fire trucks. An ambulance.
The woman watched with mounting horror as a pair of paramedics lifted a gurney out of the ambulance and began wheeling it up the driveway of a nearby house.
Her house.
My short horror story They Say Crows Can Remember Faces has been published by The Afterpast Review. When a bully kills one of Ava’s favorite crows, he quickly learns that some animals never forget a face.
Content warning: bullying, animal death, mild goreThe stone hit Ava in the back of the head. She stumbled and fell, spilling her schoolbooks out of her arms and onto the dirt road in front of her. Gravel dug into her palms as she threw out her hands to break her fall. Her knees skidded painfully across the ground.
“Have a nice trip!” a boy’s voice called out from behind her, to a chorus of laughter. “See you next fall!”
My sci-fi horror story A Piece of the Sky has been published in Strange Skies, Weird Worlds by Apocalypse Confidential. It’s told through the testimony of the surviving member of a two-person asteroid mining crew that picked up an unfortunate souvenir during their expedition.
Content warning: goreWith all due respect, sir, you don’t know what you’re talking about. There was no way Bakely could’ve known what the thing was when he picked it up. It looked like a rock. Hell, it was a rock, just a hunk of the asteroid’s crust that he grabbed as a souvenir for his kid. There’s no way he could’ve known it was a nest.
The audio production of my horror story Feed the Worm is now available on Scary Stories Told in the Dark, a podcast by Chilling Tales for Dark Nights. If you like stories about carnivorous cosmic murder worms, this is the one for you!
Content warning: domestic violence, mild goreMy story is the second in the episode, starting around the 32:40 mark.
Four of my horror drabbles—three originals and a reprint—have been published in the Drabbledark III anthology by Shacklebound Books.
The animated version of my dystopian sci-fi thriller I Hope You’re Happy has been released on the Storiaverse app, which combines original animation with text to create a unique interactive reading experience. The app is now available for free on both iOS and Android.
In the State of Bliss, the only crime punishable by death is crying.
It isn’t a difficult law to enforce, given the rarity of the offense. In fact, there hasn’t been an execution in Bliss for decades—nary a tear has been shed in over 50 years. Babies in Bliss are born quiet and serene, passing through their mothers’ hips like wet grapes through pursed lips: just a soft little pop sound, and the newborns emerge into the world with smiles on their faces and birdsong in their lungs.
That’s what made Fiona’s reaction all the more unusual: she was absolutely sobbing with despair. Uncontrollably, inconsolably sobbing.
Warren Benedetto 